Do I look Busy?

If it ain’t enough to have 3 public employees on paid retreat pending a post-holiday investigation, now we have a front page story on three more employees tooting their horns acting like they did something..

First, let me define a few words for everyone:

Loophole, in Law, is a weakness or exception that allows the law to be circumvented or otherwise legally avoided by some means. Loopholes are searched for and used in a variety of circumstances, including taxes, politics, and criminal justice.

Law is a system of rules usually enforced through a set of institutions. Law affects everyday life and society in a variety of ways.

Local ordinance is a law usually found in a municipal code. In the United States, these laws are enforced locally in addition to state law and Federal law.

Now on to my point.

For those of you playing at home, the Smoke Free Illinois Code starts on page 222. This was released Oct. 7, 2007.

Where the hell is this “loophole”? It CLEARLY states in there that:

A proprietor may designate an area as an outdoor patio where smoking is

Permitted…..

“"Outdoor patio" means an area that is either: enclosed by a roof or other overhead covering and walls or side coverings on not more than two sides; or has no roof or other overhead coverings regardless of the number of walls, fence or other side coverings. This includes, but is not limited to, beer gardens or other outdoor seating.”

How can something that is undoubtedly spelled out be a “loophole”?

It also states as far as drafting a “local ordinance”:

NOTICE OF PROPOSED RULES

a) Any home rule unit of local government, any non-home rule municipality, or any

non-home rule county within the unincorporated territory of the county may

regulate smoking in public places, but that regulation must be no less restrictive

than the Act and this Part.

Which means: You can add to it and make it stricter but not take away anything defined in the act.

So pretty much what your saying is that your gonna cut & paste from the Smoke Free act, like I have, and make it a local ordinance? In addition, the “new” ordinance would require bar owners to obtain a special "Class H" license to have a beer garden. What make-a-buck-Chuck and his panel failed to disclose is this license will cost each and every beer garden owner $50 a year.

Meanwhile at Baldwin Field sits a 40,000 sq. ft. empty building with a $398,280.14 defaulted loan on it. If you go out to look at it, be careful driving down Broadway and reading the Electronic Message Boards. You might get into a wreck.